Fired for Being Too Fat?

03.06.12

Dutch Model Deemed ‘Too Fat’ Gets Her Day in Court and Poses to Prove Her Point

Ananda Marchildon, Holland’s Next Top Model, allegedly fired for being too fat, will hear Wednesday if she has won her lawsuit against the modeling agency that booted her. In the meantime, she makes her case by posing for another fashion firm—and The Daily Beast.

Judgment day is coming in the case of the woman named Holland’s Next Top Model in 2008. But this time it’s not on TV, it’s due to be pronounced in a Dutch court on Wednesday. Was Ananda Marchildon too fat, or, specifically, too hippy to receive the €75,000 in assignments promised by the show? The modeling agency Elite is alleged to have said she had “a nice face but a fat ass.” Specifically, she was two centimeters, or three quarters of an inch, wider than they’d allow, suggesting she wouldn’t look good on runways and wouldn’t even fit in the designers’ clothes. So they cut her off with a payout of only €10,000 (about $13,000).

On Tuesday, to bolster her lawsuit to win back the rest of the money, and, well, perhaps sway Dutch public opinion, Marchildon teamed up with underwear manufacturer Sloggi for a new photo shoot and invited The Daily Beast to watch the session.

Photos: Too Fat to Model?

Photographer Lutske Veenstra insisted the heat in the studio be kept high. “I hate having to retouch goose bumps,” she said as Marchildon donned a succession of minimalist undergarments, some of them in solid orange, the national color of the Netherlands.

“We think Ananda is a beautiful woman with a butt that most Dutch women would dream of having.”

Marchildon, 25, currently makes ends meet working as a cabinet maker, and her manner is normally demure if not indeed shy. But the lights, the cameras, and her state of deshabille seemed to transform her. “I guess I am really baring the facts now,” she joked, tilting her head girlishly.

Sloggi underwear is best known for its advertising campaign featuring women with different size and different shape derrières standing in a row, and for this particular stunt the company is billing itself the “butt experts.” “Our brand is everyday fashion for the everyday woman.” says Maartje van Geel, marketing manager of the Sloggi brand for the Triumph Company. “We think Ananda is a beautiful woman with a butt that most Dutch women would dream of having.”

Van Geel got the idea to provide extra support for Marchildon’s case after she saw her on a Dutch talk show: “I instantly thought, this is something for us! After all, we really are the buttocks brand.” After the shoot the photos were released to all major Dutch media outlets with the claim that proves “100 percent” that Ananda is as pretty behind as she is in front. “What is a perfect bum?” Sloggi asks, and “Wouldn’t we prefer to see beautiful shapely female curves instead of the skin and bones mannequins still customary in modeling?”

With the Sloggi shots and these snapshots exclusive to The Daily Beast, the readers can judge for themselves.